Despite his protestations to the contrary ( ''all material contained herein is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be confused with any other form of artistic expression''), despite his whimsical titles and his joky, deliberately misleading sleeve-notes, this is Frank Zappa's 'serious' music, and seriously the best of it should be taken. Zappa describes its style as ''preposterously non-modern'', but for the biggest and most 'serious' piece here, The Perfect Stranger, 'post-Varese with frequent gestures of acknowledgment towards Messiaen' would be closer to the mark. (read more)

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"Francesco Zappa, we're told, survived 25 years of the eighteenth century before making his final cadence. It is surprising his neighbours stood it for so long as that. Not that there is anything the least objectionable in his music. Quite the reverse. It suffers from complete perfection—impeccably elegant, blissfully symmetrical, and regular as a well-dosed patient. His notes could never be inégales. Francesco's twentieth-century namesake, however, recognized in these scores suitable material for transmutation into the golden glories of space-age timbres." (read more) 

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"Indeed, it is both touching and apposite that Cage's legendary 4'33'' of inhabited silence be entrusted to the late Frank Zappa who, the odd shuffle notwithstanding, simply sits by and lets it all happen. Your contribution—and don't forget that for Cage, listening also means participating—is to have Zappa's silence enrich your own, so that whatever occurs therein (or thereafter) helps fashion a 'unique' experience." (read more)

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"The phrase ‘arranged for brass quintet’ too often means ‘emasculated and equipped with brass-band cliches and showy solos for the lead trumpet’. Meridian, however, is a sextet (brass plus drums), most of whose players can either double on a non-brass instrument (guitar, saxophone, more drums) or can sort of sing. So I need not have worried: the mercurial Zappa and the anarchic Don Van Vliet (also known as Captain Beefheart) are not excessively neatened and tidied by these arrangements. " (read more)

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"Yes, this is Frank Zappa played on baroque instruments. Authenticity to Zappa is no doubt a deal more important than authenticity to the baroque, so no one will object to the (doubly) inauthentic use of a melodica (a sort of end-blown mouth-organ with a keyboard; though Zappa might have preferred its coarser cousin the goofus); in fact, doubling with baroque oboe it can sound rather like a saxophone, and on its own can produce the ‘bent’ notes that were so characteristic of Zappa’s guitar playing. Speaking of guitars and authenticity, the baroque strings use an amount of pizzicato that would have surprised Monteverdi, though both he and Zappa might have regretted the infrequent use of the punchy baroque bassoon." (read more)

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"The idea of Frank Zappa’s compositions becoming repertory music is a delicious irony, though not entirely an accidental one. On one hand, he regarded most classical ensembles as glorified bar bands covering other people’s hits; on the other, he often said he played rock music only because no classical musicians would play his works. For Zappa, seriousness and shock value went hand in hand, and the key to being in his club was knowing how to separate the two." (read more)

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"This album of orchestrated Frank Zappa arrives, as such albums tend to, with a fawning booklet-note by a classical composer – hello Philip Cashian, who’s clearly in love with the Zappa mythology. As Cashian points out, Zappa was indeed a ‘guitarist, songwriter, composer, film-maker, satirist, writer and social and political commentator all rolled into one’ and while, fair comment, it’s true that ‘you could never tell which combinations of those elements would come out in Zappa’s music’, that doesn’t mean everything he touched turned to gold. The big feature here is The Perfect Stranger, which Zappa, with characteristic chutzpah, managed to persuade Pierre Boulez to record in 1974." (read more)

Source: gramophone.co.uk

"Stravinsky's revolutionary Rite is 100 this year. From Messiaen and Boulez to Reich and Zappa, no musician after Stravinsky could fail to be influenced bu his revolutionary ballet score, writes Philip Clark."

Source: Vitaly Zaremba

...
Whereas Goebbels provokes, Frank Zappa overwhelms in his desire to confront the listener with his pungent and (almost) invariably ironic worldview. This selection of five orchestral pieces, taken from across his multifarious output, underlines why this most assaultive of rock musicians has posthumously become a composer with whom to reckon – ranging as it does from the sardonic schmaltz of Dog Breath Variations, via the Boulezian textural intricacy of The Perfect Stranger, to the big-band anarchy of Revised Music for Low Budget Orchestra. Famously intolerant of ‘dumbing down’ on whatever level, Zappa demands a commitment from his players such as the Norwegian forces meet admirably. The sound is commendably detailed and upfront, though it is a pity that the stylishness of LAWO’s presentation is rather compromised by the booklet-notes – superficial for Goebbels, wholly inadequate for Zappa.